Dread Nemesis of Mine (40 page)

"Oh, and how to control blood urges, and what
to do if we get the munchies," Ash added.

"How does daylight feel?" Elyssa asked.

"Uh, normal." Ash shrugged. "The recruiter
told us we'd feel sluggish and tired in daylight, but he was
wrong."

Nyte nodded. "I'm just glad I don't have to
worry about bursting into flames or having a hot girl stab me in
the chest with a stake."

"So they're not normal vampires?" Katie said,
looking somewhat relieved.

"Not entirely," Elyssa said. She asked them
several more questions, probably straight out of the Templar
handbook for identifying vampires, and mulled over their answers
before asking one last question. "And how many vials did you say
this guy has?"

"Probably thirty or forty," Ash said. "No
telling how many others he's already juiced with the stuff."

Elyssa stood and brushed the dust off her
jeans. "We've got to get those vials."

"The orientation is at the same place they
took your dad," Ash said, looking at me. "The dude gave us a pass
phrase to get in the front door. Supposedly, we're gonna meet
Maximus, too."

"Has he added any security?" I asked.

"We only went one time before," Nyte said, an
apologetic look on his face. "The recruiter took us in to meet a
British guy. We didn't think to look for cameras or anything."

"We didn't even know they
were
vampires," Ash said. "They told us the meeting was about finding
new meaning or some crap like that. The British guy asked us a lot
of questions."

Nyte shuddered. "And he shook our hands in a
really creepy way, too."

"Did he have a monocle and an oiled
mustache?" I asked.

Nyte gave a vigorous nod. "Yeah, exactly.
Accent like Sherlock Holmes."

"The Master," I said. "Maximus's sire."

"Didn't you say Felicia needs Maximus's
blood?" Nyte said.

"She needs the blood of her sire, whoever
that is," I replied. I flicked my gaze to Elyssa. "It must be the
Master, right? I mean, who else could it be? Unless Maximus has
more than one elder vampire helping him."

Elyssa pulled a ring from her pocket, crowned
with a tiny red gem. "Meghan made this to help. She charmed it with
Felicia's blood so when we're within a few yards of her sire, it'll
glow. The closer we are, the brighter the glow."

Nyte oohed. "A magic ring?"

She smiled. "Yep. Not much else to it,
though."

"I wish I could do magic," Ash said, looking
glum.

I stared at the ring, my mind wandering in a
thousand different directions.

"You've got that look," Elyssa said, crossing
her arms.

I turned to Nyte. "When is the
orientation?"

He checked the time. "At midnight, a couple
of hours from now."

"Please tell me you're not thinking what I
think you're thinking," Elyssa said, a note of alarm in her
voice.

"Your father won't even be ready to attack
for a couple of days," I said. "By then, it might be too late for
Felicia." I sighed. "It might be too late for me."

"We'll do whatever it takes," Ash said.

Nyte nodded. "No matter what, guys, we'll
help."

"If I can help, I will," Katie said, giving
Ash a concerned look.

I took Elyssa's hand. "Trust me, babe, I have
a plan." My stomach, heaved. Apparently, it didn't think my plan
was so great. I grinned to cover my nerves. "Where's a good Goth
store?"

An hour later, I stood before a mirror, a man
transformed. My eyes gleamed red. Fake fangs protruded beneath my
lips. But the biggest difference was my hair. Elyssa's mom, whose
day job was hair styling, cropped my hair close and bleached it
blonde. By the time I put on the designer jeans and long-sleeve
button-up shirt, I looked like a vampire who'd escaped a steamy
romance novel.

"Your father doesn't like this plan one bit,"
Leia said, looking me over, and preening my eyelashes.

Elyssa took a towel and brushed something off
my ear. "We don't have time to wait for him to be ready."

Leia looked at her daughter. "He promised not
to get in your way, but he is sending a squad of his best people to
go along."

"As long as he doesn't storm the castle," I
said. "We don't need a bloodbath."

"Why do you think he hasn't gone in already?"
Leia said. She took Elyssa's hands. "I'm not saying the plan is a
bad one. Just be careful."

Elyssa offered her mother a smile. Nodded.
"We will."

Her mother turned to me. "Bring my daughter
back, Justin."

It was hard meeting her eyes, but I forced
myself to do it. "Yes Ma'am."

Someone knocked on the door. Elyssa opened
it. Adam Nosti stood outside, tablet in hand.

"I did some digging and found some background
on Maximus and the Master." He stepped inside. Gave a nod to Leia.
"Want to see?"

"Let's save it for the group," I said,
motioning toward the door. "No sense in repeating it."

"You don't look half bad as a blonde," Elyssa
said, running a hand through my short hair as we stepped into the
hallway. "Will you be able to mask yourself from the vampires?"

"I did it the last time," I said.
"Considering all the freaks after me, it's a matter of pure
survival."

We made our way to the main hall where the
rest of my so-called team waited. As my eyes wandered over the
assembled crowd, I found it hard to believe how large the group had
grown. Cinder sat isolated in a chair near the corner of the room,
his gray eyes never leaving the motley crew. Katie also sat
somewhat apart from the group, her uncertain eyes regarding Ash.
She'd been through a lot. Seen a lot. And she'd killed. I knew from
experience how bitter a pill that was to swallow.

I also wondered how deep her emotions ran for
Ash. Had his change from gentle Goth nerd to vampire changed her
feelings? No telling. Trying to understand women was like—well,
like trying to understand something that's super hard to
understand. But maybe things would work out. I spotted Ash where he
stood next to Nyte, taking in the motley crew. But I also caught
his furtive attempts to look at Katie, worry on his face.

Man, I knew the feeling.

I still felt the weight of my mental scars
after seeing Brad Nichols and others die as a result of the
vampling curse. I had also killed people. Some people needed
killing, but it didn't make me feel any better about it.

Most of this crowd had fought together. They
knew each other. While they'd never be the perfect, happy-go-lucky
bunch I'd seen in sitcoms, I still considered them family. A
wonderful, bizarre, dysfunctional family. At least I knew what they
were, rather than the lie of a perfect family my parents had
smothered my childhood with. For all I knew, my mom had blurred out
all the negative memories, leaving me with only positive ones.

It doesn't matter anymore.

My parents might as well have been dead.

Nyte was speaking with animated gestures to
Shelton and Bella, probably begging for magic tricks. He'd already
extracted a promise from Ryland to transform into a wolf, though I
expected he'd hovered close to the lycan so he could gawk at
Stacey's shapely form.

Meghan stood near the roaring fireplace,
while Adam took up a position in the center of the room, his tablet
ready with whatever information he'd gleaned. His face looked pale.
I had to assume he was worried sick about his sister. Meghan's eyes
locked with mine and held contact for the space of a couple of
seconds. If she was trying to tell me something, I didn't get
it.

"Oh, lamb," Stacey said, walking a circle
around me, a purr in the back of her throat. "You look absolutely
delicious." She glanced at Leia. "I really must have you style my
hair sometime. You do a marvelous job."

"A Templar hair dresser?" Shelton said from
his position on a leather sofa to the left of the table. "I don't
get it."

Leia shrugged. "It started out as a cover for
one of our operations many years ago. By the time we were done, I
realized how much I enjoyed styling. So I continued."

"If you'd ever take off that cowboy hat,
maybe she could gussie you up," Ryland said to Shelton with a
wolfish grin.

Shelton grunted and pulled off the hat to
reveal his close-shorn head. "For one thing, wolf man, this is a
fedora, not a cowboy hat. As for hair—" He gave a disdainful look
at Ryland's thick head of long, unruly hair. "I got a pair of hedge
trimmers that might improve that mess."

Ignoring the verbal jousting, I set my
arcphone on the table in the middle of the room. "Before we start
talking about waxing body hair Brazilian style, maybe I should go
over the plan." I spoke some magic words to pull up a holographic
image of Maximus's crib. Unless the rogue vampire had changed
things up, the map appeared accurate, including the location of the
crypt where he'd kept my father deep beneath the old building. As I
looked it over, apprehension settled over me. Never in my wildest
dreams had I imagined setting foot back in the place where Elyssa
had almost died. The place where I'd first manifested into demon
form and annihilated a mob of vamplings. The place where Felicia
had sicced those very vamplings on me and Elyssa. How ironic it
was, going back into that place to save Felicia.

"Are you okay, Justin?" Bella said, concern
etched in her face.

I shook my head. "Yeah. Sorry." I covered my
worry with a smile. "Just some bad memories of this place." I
glanced at Nyte, whose eyes were glued to Stacey's backside as she
prowled about the room. I cleared my throat. "Anything you and Ash
want to add before I go over the plan, Nyte?"

Ash looked away from Katie, a guilty
expression on his face. "No?"

Nyte wiped the corner of his mouth and jerked
from his ass-induced trance. "Uh, no. I wish we had more inside
info."

I waved to Adam. "Want to show us what you
found on Maximus?"

The gawky Arcane came to the table and set
his tablet on it. Flicked a finger across the surface. The
black-and-white image of a man with a monocle and an oiled mustache
flickered into the air. "Meet Simon Barclay, aka The Master. This
is the vampire turning noms for Maximus."

"What a horrid moustache," Stacey said,
wrinkling her nose.

Adam smiled, though it didn't look like his
heart was in it. "Barclay isn't ancient by vampire standards,
having been around only since the fourteenth or fifteenth century,
but from all the information I was able to find about him, he's
anti-establishment."

"He doesn't like the Red Syndicate?" Ryland
asked.

Adam shook his head. "Back before vampires
modernized to the Syndicate, they ruled with an elder council.
Barclay thought vampirism was a gift they should spread to the
masses. The elders disagreed. Said it was reserved only for a
chosen few."

"Populist versus the elitists," Shelton said.
"How quaint."

"Barclay formed his own cult and tried to
create a vampire army. At the time, he wasn't old enough and,
instead, wiped out an entire village in Northern Ireland with the
vampling plague." Adam changed the image to that of old drawings,
showing zombie-like vampires in the act of killing screaming
victims. "Sound familiar?"

"Obviously, he's old enough to turn noms into
vampires now," Bella said. "But why did he wait centuries before
trying this again?"

"Apparently, the elders ordered Barclay
executed. I couldn't find any historical records about the results,
but I think it's safe to say they failed. Barclay went underground
for centuries. When he came back, he must have started by turning
Maximus, using him as a proxy instead of coming out of the shadows
himself."

"Because the Syndicate would kill Barclay,"
Elyssa said.

Adam shrugged. "Far as I know, a number of
the elders from those days are still around. I'm sure they haven't
forgotten." He switched to the black-and-white image of a group of
vampires posing with fanged grins before what looked like an old
Ford Model T. Using his finger, he circled a familiar face on the
far left. "Say hello to Herbert Lipschitz, aka Maximus, shown here
shortly after his transformation to vampire."

A few chuckles went up around the room.

"Are you serious?" Stacey said, raising an
eyebrow. "His bloody name is Herbert?"

"I kid you not," Adam said, zooming in to
show Maximus's face.

"No wonder he changed it," Ryland said with a
grin.

Adam moved the focus to another familiar
face, at least to me. "As you can see, Barclay is in this picture
as well. According to the writing on the back, this photo was taken
a couple of days after he turned this group of men into
vampires."

"So we know for sure Barclay is Maximus's
sire," Bella said, leaning in to examine the hovering image.

"I couldn't find much more about Maximus's
history, but he was supposedly abandoned by his immigrant parents
when they arrived in America. A rich Jewish couple, the
Lipschitzes, found him abandoned at a warehouse by the docks and
raised him as their own. Sometime after this picture was taken, his
adoptive parents were found murdered in an alley, supposedly
mugged, and Maximus took over the family fortune."

"Did he kill them?" Katie asked.

The Arcane shrugged. "From the old newspaper
articles I dug up, plenty of people suspected as much, but nothing
was ever proved." He glanced back at me. "Anyway, that's all I
got."

Shelton raised his hand. "One thing I gotta
know."

Adam raised an eyebrow. "What's that?"

"How in the hell do you say Lipschitz with a
straight face?"

After the chuckles died down, I spoke. "The
plan is simple. Elyssa, Nyte, Ash, and I will go in Maximus's front
door and act like we're there for the orientation." I held up a
tiny glass ball. "Along the way, we'll drop these flashers Shelton
gave me. Once we identify Felicia's sire using the magic ring from
Meghan, I'll shout out the magic word to activate the flashers.
That should stun or knock out most of the vamps. We'll grab Barclay
and Maximus and head out."